Lawmakers: Transportation infrastructure funding disproportionate

(The Center Square) – Raleigh and Charlotte are soaking up a disproportionate share of North Carolina’s road construction funds, leaving other fast-growing parts of the state behind, legislators said Thursday at a committee meeting in the House of Representatives.

Counties in the eastern and western parts of the state “are not getting projects, even though their growth is exploding,” Rep. John Torbett, a Republican from Gaston County, said at a meeting of the the Select Committee on North Carolina’s Transportation Future.

“It’s been – at least from a legislative perspective, 13 years since we’ve heard about how growth has impacted our transportation needs around the state,” the legislator said. “What I’m hearing is that it’s time for a full and comprehensive study to show how growth has impacted and is currently impacted the state.”

There are more transportation projects needed than there are funds for many of them, Torbett said.

“Needless to say, if we had the funds to accommodate, we probably ...